Annie Laurie drew back in her seat with a sort of shudder.
“Oh, Carin,” she said, “I’m afraid things aren’t going to be like that with me. Fine chances aren’t going to come my way. Once I might have thought they would, but now everything is changed. There seems to be so little chance of finding poor dad’s money, and I know so little about earning any. Of course since Sam came, it’s better. The cows are being properly cared for, the milk gets off in time, and the bills are sent out correctly, and all that.”
“Wasn’t it fine of him to come back and work for you like that?”
“Fine? I think it was magnificent. At first, the aunts couldn’t understand it at all. You know I hadn’t told them my suspicions about Mr. Disbrow, and I had begged the neighbors not to do so. The idea hadn’t occurred to them. It was better for them to go on hunting and prying around all their lives than to get to hating some one and feeling revengeful. So they couldn’t see what Sam meant by saying he would come and work for us for nothing. Aunt Adnah never had liked him very well. She called him ‘that Disbrow boy.’ But Mr. Summers and Mr. Carson persuaded her that Sam was going into the dairy business sometime and that he would consider it a privilege to work for us and learn the business, and that contented her. It made her think he was practical and she began to like him better. As for Sam, he works from early morning till late at night, and the place begins to look the way it did when dad was managing it.”
“And does he seem happy—Sam?” asked Carin.
“No—o, I can’t say he does quite. But he’s something better than happy. He goes around with a strange look on his face, as if his own thoughts interested him more than anything else. He’ll hardly talk with me at all. I’d think that he disliked me, only I know better. He’s ashamed for his family and he won’t intrude on me. That’s what he’s thinking. At first I tried to make him feel differently, but then I saw I was bothering him, and so I made up my mind to let him alone. I reckon he knows I’ll never go back on him.”
“And he hasn’t an idea where his people are?”
“Not an idea.”
“If they were going West why didn’t they take the train here at Lee? What made them go wandering away in the mountains?”
“Well, I’ve talked with Mr. McBirney about that, and he says Mr. Disbrow was a mountain man born and bred, although he’s been living in town the last few years, and he says no mountain man would go off and leave his chickens and cow and dogs behind him. It wouldn’t so much as occur to him to do it. Then, too, he thinks Mr. Disbrow didn’t dare try to take the train at Lee. If the people had seen him going they would have stopped him. Besides that, I don’t believe Mrs. Disbrow would be willing to go on the train where everybody could see and stare at her. You know she can’t bear to be looked at. I suppose it’s because she’s so like a ghost. Why, her clothes just hang about her like the rags on a scarecrow, and her face is the color of dough and all fallen in. It’s a fact; everyone would turn to look at her. She doesn’t look as if she had lived in the world at all—and she hasn’t for a good many years.”